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One thing to consider with the housing market is that housing scarcity, which is the driver for this pricing, is partially caused by population increases. Howev

One thing to consider with the housing market is that housing scarcity, which is the driver for this pricing, is partially caused by population increases. However, population growth is predicted to stagnate in large parts of the world, and has already stagnated in some places. Some countries are going to see a shrinking population. Particularly wealthy countries. So, we're used to prices going up forever but what happens when housing demands stops growing and housing supply starts growing due to more people dying than get born? Interesting question to answer if you are making long term investments in real estate. Of course part of the world are still going to have significant growth. I don't have the answer but a good wisdom shared by pilots and system administrators is that everything that goes up must come down.

IkmoIkmo 5y ago
> Some countries are going to see a shrinking population. Particularly wealthy countries. That's not entirely clear. In terms of births it's correct, but at any point in time there's millions of people ready to migrate to wealthy countries if they'd let them, and these countries spend billions a year on all kinds of measures to (except for some), keep most of them out. At the moment it looks like most rich countries such as US/Canada, western-europe etc, will keep growing due to migration from places with birth surplus. Apart from that, we're seeing substantial increases in housing demand simply from preferences alone. The number of single-person households grew by 7x while the population grew by 2x since 1960, for example. The household size (persons) has halved despite household size (square foot) having doubled. Even if we had fewer people, we'd still want to live larger and share our homes with fewer people. That's directly linked to fewer marriages/children etc. In that sense, the drop in births is also correlated with an increase in single-person households and fewer people sharing a home, increasing housing demand, and at least partially compensating the smaller population. In other words, I doubt we'll be seeing any drastic price drops from this demographic change alone, there's too many other factors, some of which correlate in the opposite direction.

IkmoIkmo 5y ago

> Some countries are going to see a shrinking population. Particularly wealthy countries. That's not entirely clear. In terms of births it's correct, but at any point in time there's millions of people ready to migrate to wealthy countries if they'd let them, and these countries spend billions a year on all kinds of measures to (except for some), keep most of them out. At the moment it looks like most rich countries such as US/Canada, western-europe etc, will keep growing due to migration from places with birth surplus. Apart from that, we're seeing substantial increases in housing demand simply from preferences alone. The number of single-person households grew by 7x while the population grew by 2x since 1960, for example. The household size (persons) has halved despite household size (square foot) having doubled. Even if we had fewer people, we'd still want to live larger and share our homes with fewer people. That's directly linked to fewer marriages/children etc. In that sense, the drop in births is also correlated with an increase in single-person households and fewer people sharing a home, increasing housing demand, and at least partially compensating the smaller population. In other words, I doubt we'll be seeing any drastic price drops from this demographic change alone, there's too many other factors, some of which correlate in the opposite direction.